Developing a Backlink Strategy

One of the most important ranking factors is backlinks -- other websites that have links toward a site's content (pages). Backlinks are an important ranking factor, because they signal to search engines that the website is trusted by others. This is probably weighed around 30% of ranking.

 

Best Practices

• Focus on the low hanging fruit first. What other website do you have control or influence of? Have you created profile links on your social media profiles?
• Each domain that links to the site has a different amount of transferred influence. For example, if a link to the site from Google (very hard to get) will get a huge boost vs. a link to the site from a new, small website.
• Anchor text matters to a degree. If the link to the page has keyword dense text as a hyperlink, then that can help ranking, so it’s better to have anchors vs the link itself (“Check out the best summer shirts for men.” vs. “Check out www.brand.com/shop/jeans/men.”)
• Develop a strategy to automatically generate backlinks and leverage a partnership network.
• Social shares matter and can be treated similarly to a backlink.
• Monitor backlinks! Low quality links can cause a website to be penalized by Google. Never pay for links. Since low quality backlinks can hurt ranking, it can be a tactic of harm from a competitor, so monitor them carefully. If foul play or spam is suspected, a disavow tool can be used to signal to Google that the linkback is not authorized.
• Backlinks have better signal when they are “follow” vs. “nofollow.”